Hearing his name snaps his body stiff, whisks his mind back from the dirt hills of mile two at Sheltered Meadow.

"What the heck is he talking about? ‘Singing the body electric?’"

He knows that one, but feels the searing heat of many eyes burning his face. "I dunno’," he whispers.

Someone in back mumbles, "Stinky don’t know much," breaking up the class until Mr. Abrams’ eyes shoot lasers across the room, quieting them instantly before turning again to Jason.

"‘It is in his limbs...his joints...the carriage of his neck...to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem’," the lines dance from Abrams’ lips. "You have no idea what any of this means, Mr. Foreman?"

Words swell in his chest, trying in vain to push themselves through his stifled throat while Abrams’ eyes become floodlights. The electronic bong of the bell explodes through the class, sending desks squealing and slapping notebooks shut, while Jason falls back into his chair, feeling the air rush from him.

Mr. Abrams drops his head and does an abrupt about-face. "Finish Whitman for Monday," he says, in the matter-of-fact voice he uses when reminding everyone to bring a #2 pencil to class. He sits studying an attendance sheet when Jason passes, and Jason wants to stop and tell him he knew that poem. Knew, because months earlier he’d sat in front of the TV watching the marathon from Boston, the strides of the three leaders so fluid and steady it seemed they ran that race inches above the ground. Then, when two sprinted down that crowded street, he sat long after the finish tape was broken, his eyes fixed, burning, though he didn’t understand why. But now he could point to that poem and say, "I think this is what Whitman meant."

His feet, however, steer him out into the halls, where he scans the rushing swarms before stepping forward. He is mostly just ignored here now, and does this out of habit; yet still waits for a jostling bunch of freshman wrestlers to pass before heading off to his locker. Two months into high school and they’re more settled here than he is, and he wonders how that can be possible.

An old student had stopped by to visit Mr. Abrams last week. When he left, Abrams said, "See that, enjoy yourself here. You may not believe it now, but you’ll miss this place when you’re gone." But Jason knew he never would, and that when he was gone he would never need to come back. School had meant fear to him—since that day in junior high, at least, when three boys from gym class wrestled him to the ground, punching and kicking him.

"Look at you," they spit, after letting him go, "Your face looks like a bomb exploded. And that nose—too bad it doesn’t point north, at least you’d never get lost."

The mirror couldn’t deny it, either—his nose shot like an arrow from a face riddled with splotches of red. After a few weeks of listening to them he had to brush his teeth with his head bowed to the sink, because he swore every time he looked that nose had gotten bigger, or another tract of clear skin had been overrun.

"Your nose is fine. You just have to grow into it," his mother would say, assuring him he was imagining it all. By that time, though, everyone at school seemed to have noticed, too.

He was a story to them. Half joke, half urban legend—a small, scared sixth-grader in a junior high locker room that stunk sharp and brown with sweat, one boy standing over him, the rest circling him into a corner.

"You pushed me, man," the boy said, shoving him so that he crashed into the lockers with a sound like a broken drum.

"I tripped, I’m sorry," he choked, their eyes a hundred angry blades against his throat.

Would this be the time when they would not stop, he had wondered then. Will they kill me this time? And the fear that gripped his mind took his body as well, that locker room starting to smell worse than before.

It took them a moment to realize, but then their shouts were deafening, even while they backed away. He stood listening to their delight echo off the lockers and down the halls, wishing he could somehow bargain for that beating.

"Go on, get yourself cleaned up," the gym coach said, as if he’d merely had a rough workout. "You can tell me what happened later."

So that is who he was. That story, and nickname after nickname. Stinky, in front of teachers, far worse when they weren’t around. And he knew that is who he would be to them forever. That is who he’d be in this place forever. He wouldn’t ever come back here.

The hell with what Abrams said.

School was fine for people like Mr. Abrams, Jason thinks, threading his way through the hall, his name is still scattered around in trophy cases from when he was a student here fifteen years ago. He was one of them. But when you come from the Apartments—even without a freakish nose, or ravaged skin, or a father you know only from the story your mother tells when she’s had too many drinks—this school is never yours.

That’s because the Apartments are a freak themselves—a bump in the district’s map the school board fought to redraw sometime before Mr. Abrams was king. So you have here kids who curse their parents for making them drive a three-year-old truck to school, or kids from the Apartments, who dye their hair black as coal, and who Jason will hear sometimes on gray and cold afternoons slurring insults from the woods behind the track while he burns through countless 400s.

Cobain is one of those, now. His real name is Billy, but everyone calls him Cobain because of the Nirvana shirts he wears. He and Jason became friends when Cobain moved in across the hall the summer before junior high. But the Apartments, and the woods, and their easy temptations, won out, so their friendship was reduced to a few words when passing in the hall.

He sometimes wondered what he had inherited from his father—the nose, of course, but had the speed come from him also? Like some consolation prize for his absence? If so, he would take it—he’d long ago stopped grieving for someone that had been there for one night of his mother’s life and none of his.

But that was only part of it. The rest those boys had given him—the trip home from junior high becoming his afternoon’s nightmare. He’d sit in that last class waiting for the final bell, every book loaded into his knapsack so he wouldn’t need to stop at his locker. They would find him, nevertheless, and the fitful dash would begin from the school gate. Weighted down by the books, they’d catch him in a few hundred yards, shoving him to the ground and dumping the contents of that knapsack across the road, carnival faces laughing from the yellow buses while he scrambled around trying to pick the mess up. Then he’d sprint the mile and a half home to be away from it all.

Through those big glass doors he’d carry those books and that fear, tiptoeing the angry halls until it was time for that mad dash—the few hundred yards it took to catch him becoming a quarter mile, then half, then halfway down the Turnpike almost. By the end of the seventh grade they needed their bicycles to stay even close.

On the first day of high school gym class Jason’s stomach had churned until the coach led them out to the track.

But the only running he knew was running scared, so while the rest of them staggered, bending double and choking for air, he ran that mile at fear’s pace. When he finished the coach stood checking his watch, asking his name like no one had asked his name before.

"Jason Foreman," he said through heaving breaths, the clawing pain in his legs shrinking away, leaving bricks of lead there.

"You run in junior high, Mr. Foreman?"

"No," he said, not thinking for a moment of the everyday race home.

"Well that’s the second fastest mile on this track all year. And the first was Ben Watson, the lead runner on my cross-country squad. What do you think about running on the team?"

"I don’t play sports. I mean I’m not an athlete or anything."

The coach laughed, shaking his head. "Oh, you are son. You may not know it, but you are."

At first he’d stay with the team until his legs began to noodle at the intersection by the Apartments. They’d soon become a great bouncing splotch of red on the horizon, racing that final mile. When he reached the track they’d be laughing and stretching, their backs turned, and every day he promised himself he wouldn’t come back, because it was the same with them as it was with everyone else—they wouldn’t forget, nor forgive, his past.

Jason pulls on sweats in the empty locker room, tying his shoes and tiptoeing as he passes Coach’s office.

"Foreman I do not want you running today." Jason turns to see Coach still sitting in his chair with his back to the door, and wonders how he knew it was him. "What do you think you’re going to accomplish?" Coach asks, spinning the chair around.

"I’m just going to loosen up."

"You’re not gonna’ get any better today. Go home and rest."

Mr. Abrams steps out from the back of the office. "I’ll take care of him, Coach. Foreman, I’m driving you home, and I don’t want to hear a word."

"Mr. Abrams, what’re you doing here?"

"Going over volleyball rosters," he says, pulling his jacket from a chair and pointing out to the parking lot.

His head swivels in every direction as he backs the gold truck from its space. "That’s all I need is to run some kid over," he laughs, "parents would probably say I did it on purpose. How do you feel?"

"Okay"

"They’re afraid of you, you know."

"Afraid of me? Who?"

"The whole team. Coach. Watson, especially. You almost beat him last year, and he hasn’t gotten that much better. Watson’s a senior, if he wins the County’s maybe it helps him get a scholarship somewhere. You scare him like crazy. And Coach is afraid to tell you anything—afraid he might ruin you."

"I dunno’."

"Start knowing. You live here, right?" He steers the truck into the Apartments without waiting for an answer. "Brings back memories. This was home for me, too."

"You? I thought you—"

"You thought I was one of them, didn’t you?" Mr. Abrams laughs, "I guess I can see why, but it’s not like I tried to be anything other than myself. When you start doing that you’ll scare everybody."

"Thanks for the ride."

"Get your rest. I’ll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? You’re coming?"

"I heard how you run. Maybe you can give me a poetry lesson."

When his eyes open the window is still gray. He lies in bed until the alarm rings, watching sunlight crawl atop his mother’s unruffled bed across the hall. After showering he sips hot tea, flipping through the television without watching before heading out. The October mornings have just started to chill, but he knows the cold is a lie—it will warm up by race time. His legs are tight; it seems forever since he ran yesterday morning.

The bus that will take them to Sheltered Meadow is sitting empty in the school lot, so he pries the door open with his fingers and lies across one of the middle seats, feeling cold vinyl seeping through his sweats.

A short while later he hears voices—first Coach’s, the rest coming all at once, it seems. When the bus finally pulls away he sits up, watching the Saturday morning shake off the dawn: yawning faces turning over ‘Closed’ signs in store windows, preparing for the day. He would switch places with any of them right now, knowing the journey to the cliff of his pain is ahead and he will soon need to balance himself atop that narrow edge of suffering that towers over the great black canyon of collapse.

Ben Watson is clowning in the back of the bus as they pull through the gate at Sheltered Meadow. "This is Coach at spring track practice," he says, raising his voice so Coach will hear. "Son, you ran that last 400 in forty-three flat, which happens to be a new world record. But let me ask you this: How is that going to help you in a thirty-two? Remember, consistency is key. Now get out there and give me seven more."

Jason’s lips curl, while Coach turns and snarls in mock anger. The tightness in his stomach pulls the smile away. It’s always like this before the race. Sometimes he wishes he could cover himself with a blanket until the start—but always, with the gun, and the movement, all of that leaves.

The bus is passing the line of orange cones that mark the flat first mile. He traces them with his eyes to where they disappear behind picnic tables, his stomach jumping again. Cardiac Hill, a half mile of dirt and worn-thin asphalt that stares right in your face as you climb it, sits just beyond. There is the race, he thinks. The pack will still be thick there, but after Cardiac, and the smaller hills in the trails that snake behind it, they’ll shoot from those woods in a long, loose string onto the soggy turf. The crowd on the boardwalk will cheer as those hills leave their legs and they begin to push that final half-mile.

Last year, it was him and Watson, side by side. He felt himself pulling away and reached the boardwalk alone, surprised at first by the cheers of the crowd.

Go! Go!, they screamed, and he had to turn his head to see if it was someone next to him they were cheering. When he saw no one, he felt the jagged breaths catch in his throat and allowed their voices in, feeling them shoot through his legs.

The finish line was an orange thread when he heard shouts for someone else. Catch him, they called, and he tried to gauge the lead with his ears, the way he did on those panicked runs home from junior high. He knew it was Watson still, with that kick that was like an explosion and stole races from front runners, or left the pack thinking they’d had a chance until the tape was in sight and he’d be suddenly gone.

The boardwalk then became those sidewalks home, where he would trade unknown punishment for the screaming white pain that he owned. He had sometimes wondered during those chases if it would be better to just stop and take whatever they had to give. In races he found a similar question came: Could the shame of quitting be any worse than the torture he put himself through?

Watson’s footsteps remained those seconds behind, and he was at one with it all. The panic in his chest, the tearing claws at the tops of his legs—he had swallowed them in answer to that question, so that the pain became like some claustrophobic Room of Horrors. When he first joined the team he thought racing would get easier as the body conditioned itself, and that he wouldn’t need to put himself in that place anymore. He imagined himself running like he did now along the Turnpike—smooth and easy. He knew now that it didn’t get easier; it didn’t because no matter how fast you become that is what a race is: putting yourself in that Room and finding out how long you can stay there.

A runner flashed alongside of him at the Refreshment House, where the long glass windows reflected the orange October sun. The runner had the stride of those marathoners he had seen on TV—quick and long and machine-steady. His back was straight, though his shoulders pitched subtly over, leaving no doubt that body’s sole purpose was forward motion. The sight of it filled his chest, so much so that his breathing stumbled and his stride hiccuped and he found himself hands first through the air.

Distant voices shouted, Get up! while Watson’s feet drummed the wooden planks. There were more then. Suddenly. Passing by him like some great rumbling animal. Coach came to him later, in minutes that felt like hours.

Are you Okay?

I am, he told him, I am okay. He got up, the splinters in his hands and knees burning, salt-water gales turning sweat into thousands of icy daggers across his chest and back. At the bus they were high-fiving Watson.

What the hell happened? someone from the crowd asked.

I tripped, he shrugged, the crowd laughing together.

The bus stops with a great forward lurch and the door squawks open. The team bounces and stretches and jumps around the parking lot. Watson shadowboxes with Harry Saunders, stepping behind him and grabbing his shorts while the crowd pleads for a wedgie. Jason begins a slow trot across the parking lot toward the boardwalk, feeling the morning’s cold already surrendering to the sun. On the boardwalk, a time clock runs its way down to zero next to where the orange tape will be strung. Stopping, he looks meter by meter across the pale wood to where he had fallen.

He walks to the spot, surprised how quickly he reaches it. Last year’s race plays itself out again in his mind while he stares at his reflection in the tinted glass of the Refreshment House, seeing himself again flying across the Earth.

"Foreman! What the hell are you doing!"

The voice startles him—it’s out of place, and he turns to see Cobain, leather jacket swinging from the roll of his shoulders.

"Cob-uh...Billy, what are you doing here?"

"I came to see you, man. Make sure you don’t trip this year. I don’t want to have to quit smoking and come beat these geeks myself. It would ruin my image."

"I’ll try not to."

"Just pretend they’re chasing you from school again," Cobain laughs, a dry, hacking laugh. "I’m going to catch a coffee then I’m stationing myself right here until you fly by."

Jason turns back to the glass, the air still full of leather and smoke—the smell of the Apartments. He knows he can’t do what Cobain said, can’t pretend anymore that he is being chased. Something has happened in this second year of running. He no longer concerns himself with who is behind him. His mind now sets on what lay out in front: the next runner, the orange tape, and sometimes, when he is gliding along smooth and easy, things that stretch on far past the horizon. He hears his name again and turns to see Mr. Abrams walking from down by the clock.

Looking again into that black glass, he realizes that this was where he had first known Whitman, and he brushes his fingers across his face, atop that great nose, then down his chin, before turning to say hello.

Gus A. Isaksson runs 40-50 miles a week, mostly on the North Shore of Long Island, where he lives and works. His first piece of published fiction appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Struggle magazine.